page_title: Königsberg
section_title: Königsberg Castle
hierarchical_section_title: Königsberg / Culture and society of Königsberg / Königsberg Castle
caption_attribution_description: English: Königsberg Castle Kaliningrad, Russia
context_page_description: Königsberg is the name for the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Originally a Sambian or Old Prussian settlement, it then belonged to the State of the Teutonic Order, the Duchy of Prussia, the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany. After being largely destroyed in World War II by Allied bombing and the Red Army, it was annexed by the Soviet Union and its surviving inhabitants forcibly expelled. Thereafter, the city was renamed Kaliningrad. Few traces of the former Königsberg remain today.
  The literal meaning of Königsberg is 'King's Hill'. In the local Low German dialect, spoken by many of its former German inhabitants, the name was Kenigsbarg. Further names included Russian: Кёнигсберг, Королевец, tr. Kyonigsberg, Korolevets, Old Prussian: Kunnegsgarbs, Knigsberg, Lithuanian: Karaliaučius, Polish: Królewiec and Yiddish: קעניגסבערג Kenigsberg.
  Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement Twangste by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was named in honour of King Ottokar II of Bohemia.
context_section_description: Königsberg Castle was one of the city's most notable structures. The former seat of the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights and the Dukes of Prussia, it contained the Schloßkirche, or palace church, where Frederick I was crowned in 1701 and William I in 1861. It also contained the spacious Moscowiter-Saal, one of the largest halls in the German Reich, and a museum of Prussian history.
caption: Eastern side of Königsberg Castle, ca. 1900.
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